Stitt seeks more transparency for his own office funding

That’s a question new Gov. Kevin Stitt’s chief of staff has been trying to answer in the three months since voters elected the Tulsa businessman to become Oklahoma’s top executive.

“It’s a real frustration for us, to be perfectly honest,” Michael Junk said Monday before his boss delivered the 2019 State of the State address. “I’ve done budgets before for different offices. I ran Tom Coburn’s budget for five years, and for (Tulsa Mayor) G.T. (Bynum) obviously I engaged in the budget there. But I come here and say, ‘What’s our operating budget?’ And people kind of instruct me, ‘Here’s your $1.7 million.’ So I say, ‘Well how do you hire as many people as [Fallin] has?’ And they say, ‘Well you have to take money from over here, and there’s a revolving fund over there.’ So it’s pretty frustrating for us.”